Welcome to my blog.

Main menu

Category Book Recs

Post navigation

New Zealand crime fiction writer Paul Cleave’s latest thrilling novel ‘A Killer Harvest’ was published on 8-1-17. And just take a look at this cover, it has to be one of my absolute favorite covers! And the dust jacket is textured, it feels just like bandages.

(pic from Amazon.com)

The blurb:

Joshua is convinced there is a family curse. It’s taken loved ones from him, it’s robbed him of his eyesight, and it’s the reason why his father is killed while investigating the homicide of a young woman.

Joshua is handed an opportunity he can’t refuse: an operation that will allow him to see the world through his father’s eyes. As Joshua navigates a world of sight, he gets glimpses of what these eyes might have witnessed in their previous life. What exactly was his dad up to in his role as a police officer?

There are consequences to the secret life his father was living, including the wrath of a man hell bent on killing, a man who is drawing closer and closer to Joshua.

Joshua soon discovers a world darker than the one he has emerged from…

6/6/17 ‘The End of Temperance Dare’ by Wendy Webb was published. Wendy’s novels are just chillingly beautiful! Can’t wait to get going on this one.

(pic from Amazon.com)

The blurb:

When Eleanor Harper becomes the director of a renowned artists’ retreat, she knows nothing of Cliffside Manor’s dark past as a tuberculosis sanatorium, a “waiting room for death.” After years of covering murder and violence as a crime reporter, Eleanor hopes that being around artists and writers in this new job will be a peaceful retreat for her as much as for them.

But from her first fog-filled moments on the manor’s grounds, Eleanor is seized by a sense of impending doom and realizes there’s more to the institution than its reputation of being a haven for creativity. After the arrival of the new fellows―including the intriguing, handsome photographer Richard Banks―she begins to suspect that her predecessor chose the group with a dangerous purpose in mind. As the chilling mysteries of Cliffside Manor unravel and the eerie sins of the past are exposed, Eleanor must fight to save the fellows—and herself—from sinister forces.

On a cool June morning, a woman is walking her dog in the idyllic coastal village of Salten along a tidal estuary known as the Reach. Before she can stop him, the dog charges into the water to retrieve what first appears to be a wayward stick, but to her horror, turns out to be something much more sinister…

The next morning, three women in and around London—Fatima, Thea, and Isabel—receive the text they had always hoped would NEVER come, from the fourth in their formerly inseparable clique, Kate, that says only, “I need you.”

The four girls were best friends at Salten, a second rate boarding school set near the cliffs of the English Channel. Each different in their own way, the four became inseparable and were notorious for playing the Lying Game, telling lies at every turn to both fellow boarders and faculty, with varying states of serious and flippant nature that were disturbing enough to ensure that everyone steered clear of them. The myriad and complicated rules of the game are strict: no lying to each other—ever. Bail on the lie when it becomes clear it is about to be found out. But their little game had consequences, and the girls were all expelled in their final year of school under mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of the school’s eccentric art teacher, Ambrose (who also happens to be Kate’s father).

Ruth’s first two books ‘In a Dark, Dark Wood’ and ‘The Woman in Cabin 10’ were books that took me no time to read. She is definitely a new favorite author of mine. I haven’t had the chance to read this one yet, but it is patiently waiting for me to escape into its pages.

Dewey Andreas is back in the next thriller ‘Trap the Devil’ by Ben Coes, which was published on 6-20-17.

(pic from Amazon.com)

The blurb:

A group of some of the most powerful people in the government, the military, and the private sector, has begun a brutal plan to quietly take over the reins of the U.S. government. They’ve begun to remove the people who stand in their way―and replace them with their own sympathizers and puppets. They’ve already taken out the Speaker of the House―whose death was made to look like an accidental drowning―and the president and vice president are next. Once they have their own people in place, they plan to start a bloody, brutal war on an unimaginable scale.

On restricted duty while he recovers from injuries incurred on a previous mission, Dewey Andreas is sent to Paris by CIA Director Hector Calibrisi. The Secretary of State is going there for secret talks, and Dewey is to be an extra layer of security above the State Department team. But what should be an easy mission couldn’t go more wrong. The cabal has sent in a hit man to take out the Secretary of State and lay the blame for this murder at the feet of Dewey himself.

With the Secretary of State dead, shot by Dewey’s weapon, Dewey is on the run and out in the cold, desperately trying to unravel the plot before the conspirators succeed in killing millions of innocents.

Christina Lauren is the dynamic duo of Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings and on 6/6/17, their new novel ‘Dating You Hating You’ was published.

(pic from Amazon.com)

The blurb:

Everyone knows that all’s fair in love and war. But these two will learn that sabotage is a dish best served naked.

The first standalone romance by New York Times and #1 international bestselling author Christina Lauren (Beautiful Bastard) is a sexy, compulsively readable romantic comedy that dives headlong into the thrill and doubt of modern love.

Despite the odds against them from an embarrassing meet-awkward at a mutual friend’s Halloween party, Carter and Evie immediately hit it off. Even the realization that they’re both high-powered agents at competing firms in Hollywood isn’t enough to squash the fire.

But when their two agencies merge—causing the pair to vie for the same position—all bets are off. What could have been a beautiful, blossoming romance turns into an all-out war of sabotage. Carter and Evie are both thirtysomething professionals—so why can’t they act like it?

Can Carter stop trying to please everyone and see how their mutual boss is really playing the game? Can Evie put aside her competitive nature long enough to figure out what she really wants in life? Can their actor clients just be something close to human? Whether these two Hollywood love/hatebirds get the storybook Hollywood ending, or just a dramedy of epic proportions, you get to enjoy Christina Lauren’s heartfelt, hilarious story of romance in the modern world.

Also published on 5/2/17 was Ezekiel Boone’s ‘Skitter’ which is the creepy crawly sequel to ‘The Hatching’.

(pic from Amazon.com)

The blurb:

First, there was the black swarm that swallowed a man whole, the suspicious seismic irregularities in India that confounded scientists, the nuclear bomb China dropped on its own territory without any explanation. Then, scientist Melanie Guyer’s lab received a package containing a mysterious egg sac; little did Dr. Guyer know that, almost overnight, Earth would be consumed by previously dormant spiders that suddenly wanted out.

Now, tens of millions of people around the world are dead. Half of China is a nuclear wasteland. Mysterious flesh-eating spiders are marching through Los Angeles, Oslo, Delhi, Rio de Janeiro, and countless other cities. According to Dr. Guyer, the crisis may soon be over.

But in Japan, a giant, glowing egg sac gives a shocking preview of what is to come, even as survivors in Los Angeles panic and break the quarantine zone. Out in the desert, survivalists Gordo and Shotgun are trying to invent a weapon to fight back, but it may be too late, because President Stephanie Pilgrim has been forced to enact the plan of last resort.

America, you are on your own.

I hate spiders! HATE THEM! As much as this series creepy me the hell out, I LOVE it. But then I end up seeing spiders out of the corner of my eye for days after reading.

On 5-2-17, The ‘Girl on the Train’ author, Paula Hawkins next novel ‘Into the Water’ was published.

(pic from Amazon.com)

The blurb:

A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother’s sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from—a place to which she vowed she’d never return.With the same propulsive writing and acute understanding of human instincts that captivated millions of readers around the world in her explosive debut thriller, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins delivers an urgent, twisting, deeply satisfying read that hinges on the deceptiveness of emotion and memory, as well as the devastating ways that the past can reach a long arm into the present.Beware a calm surface—you never know what lies beneath.

I haven’t started this one yet, but is another one that I’m excited to get going on. I was really intrigued with ‘Girl on the Train’ and Hawkins’ writing and I’m sure this one will draw me in too!

On 4-18-17, Paul Vidich’s follow up to ‘An Honorable Man’, ‘The Good Assassin’ was released.

(pic from Amazon.com)

The blurb:

Former CIA Agent George Mueller arrives in Havana in August 1958—the last months before the fall of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista—to look into the activities of Toby Graham, a CIA officer suspected of harboring sympathies for the rebel forces fighting the unpopular Batista regime. Mueller knew Graham as an undergraduate and later they were colleagues in Berlin fighting the Soviet NKVD. Under the guise of their long acquaintance Mueller is recruited to vet rumors that Graham is putting weapons, covertly provided by the CIA to Batista, into the hands of Castro’s forces. Public exposure of the CIA weapons mission, and the activity of one rogue agent, threaten to embarrass the agency.

Mueller uncovers a world of deceit as the FBI, CIA, and State Department compete to influence the outcome of the revolution in the face of the brutal dictatorship’s imminent collapse. Graham, meanwhile, is troubled by the hypocrisy of a bankrupt US foreign policy, and has fallen in love with a married American woman, Liz Malone.

This was a fantastic and quick read. Again as with Vidich’s previous novel, I find the whole 50’s Cold War Espionage era fascinating.

On 3/14/17, Matthew Betley’s next Logan West Thriller ‘Oath of Honor’ was published.

(pic from Amazon.com)

The blurb:

A break-neck, edge-of-your-seat thriller that moves from a resurgent Russian threat in the Aleutian Islands to North Korean spy ships to secret Sudanese prisons as former Marines Logan West and John Quick, now members of an FBI special task force, uncover a global conspiracy that threatens America’s position in the current international balance of power.

Logan West and John Quick are sent to Dutch Harbor, Alaska, to investigate the possible presence of a Russian black ops team on a mission to steal United States next-generation technology. The resulting violent confrontation triggers a global search for the stolen technology and threatens to pit the US against China in a looming shadow war and technology race. As Logan and John—joined by the chief of the CIA’s Special Operations Group, Cole Matthews—battle their way through Spain, the Mediterranean, and ultimately, across Sudan, an imminent threat arises at home that FBI Deputy Director Mike Benson must face and determine if it is part of the deadly global conspiracy.

Haven’t had a chance to dive into this thriller yet, but I am looking forward to it! His debut novel ‘Overwatch’ was a fantastic read. I highly recommend it.